"Stop the train! Stop the train!" we yelled impotently from the dark platform at Jalgaon as the train, still holding our bikes, slowly rolled off into the night. It seemed to confirm the apprehensive feeling I had about taking this whole last segment of our trip, organized at the last minute, mere hours after American forces bombed Iraq. Did this mean we'd never see our bikes again? Would we have to take the next train back to Bombay? Was this the abrupt end of the BikeBrats? We both felt completely worn out, which only compounded the demoralizing nature of the luggage man's screw-up.
It had been a long journey to get here after all. The train from Ahmedabad to Bombay had left in the wee hours of the morning and was cramped, sweaty and overly long. We didn't arrive in the metropolis until two hours past scheduled, and we felt a bit on edge as we had no idea what to expect from the largest of India's cities. After a slow weave through some outrageous traffic and checking into our hotel, though, we were out on the streets and marveling at the relative spaciousness and civility of Bombay (now known officially as Mumbai). The old parts of town, called Fort and Colaba, didn't look like they'd changed much since the time of colonial rule, right down to the black taxis plying the streets.
Facing the imposing Victorian confection known as VT (for Victoria Terminus) stood the most unlikely sight we'd seen in all of India: a McDonald's sign. Of course no beef is served, but the lamb burger was pretty tasty, and the fries were from God. The terrace where we ate was full of wealthy-looking Mumbaiites, noshing variously on lamb- and veggie- burgers (there are two separate kitchens and lines so as not to offend any rabid vegetarians). After dinner we headed towards the tourist district of Colaba down a long arcaded street full of sidewalk vendors pushing all kinds of tacky goods.
Vendors addressed us in English --the lingua franca of much of Bombay---yet no one seemed particularly surprised to see us, which was mighty refreshing. Eventually we made it to the Regal Cinema, which was showing an American film. We eagerly bought tickets for the late screening before heading onwards for the Gateway to India, a Bombay landmark and fabled cruising spot. Not much was going on besides people setting up for a fancy wedding, so we tried to find the next place on our list: the Voodoo Pub, allegedly the only gay bar in all of India. The address we had was rather vague, so we enlisted the aid of a young Muslim street urchin called Rahul who had first addressed us with the standard Colaba greeting call of "Marijuanahashishcocaineyounggirlsorboys."
He led us to the door of the place (still empty) and then back to the movie theater, where he declined an invitation to join us but happily accepted a small monetary token of our appreciation. The film was forgettable but the cinema was spectacular, virtually unchanged since the 1940's. Fred bailed on the bar outing, too tired to think of anything but sleep, so I went alone. The Voodoo Pub would class as a third-rate queer bar anyplace else in the world, but after nearly two months in strait-laced India it was like coming to an oasis in the desert.
The blend of depraved expats, tourists, transvestites, poseurs and preppies was pretty much what I had expected. I met a pair of adorable young students --roommates in the dorm and sometimes boyfriends---as well as a dancer ("you know, in Bollywood films") who'd obviously been around the block a few times. When the bar closed I headed to the nearby "wall" along the seaside across from the Taj Mahal hotel. This is where the real homo scene seemed to be going on, but I was too beat to do anything beyond chat a little with a muscle queen visiting from Bangalore. The next morning we got up early to reserve a train out of town.
In the special foreigners line we met all sorts of people, including a clueless Argentinian who'd just flown in and wanted to go to "Pewn" (i.e. Pune, normally pronounced "Poona") and an elegant NRI (non-resident Indian) couple from Mauritius. A charming but rather vulgar woman from Goa worked the line, providing all sorts of advice. "You're staying at the Grand Hotel?" she asked us incredulously, "well that place is fucking expensive if you ask me. And if you want to go to Jalgaon the overnight train leaves from Kurla, an hour or two away by taxi, depending on the fucking traffic."
She had made our decision for us. We'd leave that night and save our further exploration of Bombay for later. Just outside the station a headline on a newspaper for sale on the sidewalk caught my eye: "Americans Bomb Iraq". For over a year now we'd been joking that a possible title for our book could be "Have We Bombed Iraq Yet?" since it's been kind of a leitmotif throughout our trip. Was it even prudent to plunge off into the hinterland? The towns we planned to pass through --Aurangabad, Ahmadnagar---didn't they sound Muslim? A hasty decision was made: we'd test the waters and see; if it felt at all dangerous (not at all unlikely here, where the majority of Indians already resent the U.S.
over our policy on Indian nuclear tests, not to mention the perceived moral turpitude of *l'affaire Lewinsky*). We whiled away the rest of the day by walking around and familiarizing ourselves with this crazy town. Fred was nervous about traffic and the time we'd need to recover our bikes from one station (Bombay Central) and check them in at another (Kurla) so we left in the middle of the afternoon for a ten o'clock train. Amazingly, our bikes were easily found (with the assistance of a baksheesh-begging porter) and strapped onto the rack of a decrepit cab. On the long, long ride out to Kurla I kept marveling at how positively [huge]{.underline} this city is, seemingly endless and without any real plan to it.
Of course there was plenty of drama at the station. The luggage king first stated that the train was an express to Calcutta and there wouldn't be enough time to unload the bikes in Jalgaon, but after we stood around moping for awhile, trying to figure out what to do next, he came up with a plan. "Well, if you wake up one station before Jalgaon, at 4:45," he said, "you can go to the luggage car and remind the guard that your bikes will be coming off. That *might* work, but I'm really not sure." We decided to risk it, since going back into Bombay seemed hopelessly complicated, and settled into the noisome first-class waiting room for a brief rest before dealing with our berth assignments.
After wandering up and down the platform (for the train was already there) I learned that Fred and I had been assigned to two separate compartments, seemingly miles away from each other. How is it that we have such bad luck with trains in this country? Nevertheless, the friendly old conductor woke me up at the appointed time. I waited at the door of the train to hop off and have a word with the luggage guard, but the train didn't even stop at the station where I was supposed to do this, so I figured I'd wing it, a little miffed at being cheated out of a half-hour's sleep.
Jalgaon. I leapt off the train while it was still rolling and headed straight back to the luggage car, immediately behind mine. The guard was unloading bags from his little office and when I asked about our bikes in the luggage bay, he informed me lazily, "There was not enough room in the car; they were not loaded in Bombay." "But we saw them going on just before the train pulled out!" I pleaded with him, "Can't you just open it and see?" But at this point there was no point in arguing, even with Fred huffing and puffing at my side.
The whistle had blown and the train was slowly pulling away into the night. The luggage nazi merely shrugged his shoulders and leapt back aboard. \--"Stop the train!" Right next to us on the platform was the office of the assistant stationmaster. Amazingly, it was open; so I marched right in and told the first person I saw of our plight. I spoke so fast that I wondered if he even understood me, or if I was addressing the right person at all, but the information was relayed to a suave-looking guy in the back office who immediately picked up the phone and began barking into it.
Hanging up the receiver, he looked at me and beamed. "Your bikes will be unloaded at the next station and sent back here, arriving at about 8:30." I thought to myself: "I'll believe that when I see it," half-afraid that the bikes were still somehow in Bombay, but he seemed so confident that now all I could think of was getting a little shut-eye. The "Railway Retiring Rooms" just above were full, so we made our way outside, where a deserted street was lined with little hotels, each less savory than the next. Most looked positively closed for the night, but one had a buzzer at the door.
A sleep-rumpled man let us in and showed us to an immaculate little room which featured --God be praised---a television set. We ravenously turned it to BBC World and learned about the bombing before falling into a deep, deep slumber. I had a particularly vivid dream where we biked into war-torn Baghdad for the day (on my cycling map I discovered with delight that it was only a short distance away), aware that the bombing only happened at night. We met up with ex-pats packing up their U-Hauls and indulging in last-minute cocktail parties as well as one Anne Waters --mother of a good friend of mine---who complained about having booked a vacation here at such a volatile time.
It was well past eight-thirty when we awoke. Neither of us really expected the bikes to be waiting for us at the station, but there they were at the platform, watched over by a couple of unwashed underlings from Indian Railways (largest employer on Earth). Fred noticed immediately that his bike's rear rim was severely bent, and he wanted to fill out a complaint. I convinced him that this was a waste of time and suggested we have breakfast and visit a bike shop instead. \--Which is precisely what we did. On the sidewalk terrace of our hotel/restaurant we packed our bags onto the bikes with hardly any audience at all (are Indians less curious here, or simply more polite?), chomped down some *dosa* and headed off to a recommended bike shop.
The shop looked better-equipped than most we'd seen and was run by a prosperous Jain family. The father and his two sons kept plying us with questions and advice. "You really should not eat meat," advised the father, "it is not good for your soul or body. I myself have never tasted the flesh of any animal. My family are Jain, which is the most perfect religion which exists, you must admit." Meanwhile, one of the two sons was showing me an Indian mountain bike and invited me to ride it, but I declined once I saw how the handlebars were irreparably loose.
He asked me how much I'd paid for my bike and when I told him (revising downwards by 60% or so) he told me I paid too much. "In India you could get the same bike for less than half that." The family also owned a hotel in Aurangabad, where we'd be in a few nights, and we promised we'd check it out --though I wondered how much more pontificating I'd be able to endure. Fred was a little leery of the way they had fixed his rim, but he had to admit that it was perfectly aligned and at least temporarily rideable.
Jalgaon was bigger than we had first thought, and far more prosperous. Riding out through the suburbs --full of light industry and a shopping mall or two---I had the odd impression of being back in Del Rio, Texas, half-expecting a Wal-Mart to appear on the horizon. Yet soon we were in the familiar countryside, albeit a countryside with a nicely paved road running through it. Our route climbed gently through lushly cultivated fields, orchards, and sweet-smelling rose plantations. A colorful human feature of the landscape were the many gypsies we saw, dressed in Gujarati style and plying the roads in their animal-drawn wagons when they weren't camped out somewhere in tents or teepees.
From what we could ascertain, these people are migrant field workers who follow the sugarcane harvest. Perfectly quiet, smooth, tree-lined roads led us all the way to Fardapur, the jumping-off place for the nearby Ajanta caves. I had taken an instant liking to Maharashtra state, wondering if all of it made for such superb cycling. As we rolled through the little village a kid on a bike came up to us. In uncannily good English he told us his name was Philip and asked if we were looking for the MTDC hotel, which in fact we were. Luckily we had him along to point it out to us, since we would have pedaled right by otherwise.
In a hurry to get up to the caves before sunset, we bolted down a *thali* lunch and jumped into an auto-rickshaw. The caves --a misnomer, since they're actually cliffs carved out by hand---were nothing short of stupendous. Excavated from the 2^nd^ century B.C. to the 12^th^ century A.D, thirty of them line a beautiful curved river gorge tucked into some desolate hills, a million miles from nowhere. Most are *viharas* featuring huge carved images of the Buddha along with intricate and well-preserved wall paintings, while others called *chaityas* have huge sphere-crowned monoliths in the center, said to represent the Buddha.
Dormitories for the monks were also carved into the rock, and the story goes that they initially came here to seek refuge from the monsoon season and carved the caves in order to have a place to pray. We visited every cave, the more spectacular of which came complete with a reflector *wallah* who lit up the rear recesses with the aid of an aluminum-covered board. As with the Taj Mahal, we had come on the one day of the week when no admission is charged, meaning that the place was crawling with Indian school groups. Many of these followed us from cave to cave, asking the usual questions and posing us for photos.
The leaders of one group from some town in the southern part of the state insisted we come visit them there if we passed through and queried us on our opinion of Clinton. "We just cannot understand how your people allow such a bad man to be your leader," one of them said, "and now he goes and attacks Iraq. In India this man could never be president." We rode back to Fardapur in a rickshaw full of locals. After dinner we went out in search of chocolate. Young Philip found us and said he knew of a place. He proceeded to lead us down a narrow dark path into what looked like the heart of the village and told us about his background.
Though he never went to school he learned how to read and write from his parents, and picked up English by talking to the tourists who passed through. "A lot of them come on bicycles," he added, "about twelve hundred a year or so." The so-called "chocolate" he found us was nothing of the sort, but I bought some so that he wouldn't lose face. As he led us back to our place he said he'd see us tomorrow, which I understood to mean that he'd be expecting some sort of backsheesh.